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In this episode we talked about:
- How can I be more organized and then follow through on tasks?
- Stop spreading yourself thin with clients by respecting your time
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Alright, we are live. Hey everybody. Welcome to episode number 73. This is the productivity Academy and we got the live Q&A going on today. And before we get started one to let you know real quick what we’re going to be covering today we had some questions from people who are in the real world productivity group which I’ll post the link and you can come join us there if you want asking about organization and follow through which is good. So kind of one how you know how you get organized in the first place. But then once you’re there, how you follow through prioritization, which is good, I’ve got a great tool that I use that I’m going to share with you.
And then a good question about dealing with customers and how you can use your time more effectively and not stretch yourself too thin, which for anybody who’s running their own business or who’s in customer facing roles. I think that this is really important. It’s something I’ve had to deal with and hopefully my experiences can help you save some time and pain and blood, sweat and tears and as well as what I’ve learned from other people. So before we dive into the first question though, just wanted to say if you’re watching live, go ahead and ask questions.
I’ll check them out as I have time on the sidebar there that I see. And if you’re not come join us. You know, come check us out. Go live every Thursday. And I understand though if you can’t always see these or maybe you’re watching the replay that we post on YouTube, that’s fine. You can hop over and let me make sure I get this right. You can go to productivity dot Academy slash questions and ask your questions ahead of time.
Just pop them in there. You can also subscribe if you’re watching on YouTube. Stay up to date with these stay up to date with app reviews and a bunch of other stuff that I post up there and as time allows, again, put out stuff to answer questions try to help you out and it’s based upon my experiences either with consulting growing businesses or helping others do the same so with that, let’s get into the questions.
So the first question that I’m going to go over was from a member in the Facebook group and they said that their problem their main problem they’re having his organization and follow through and I find that this one is something that I think we all have an issue with from time to time and I’m going to go back to the basics because I don’t know a whole lot about the background on this question but one of the best things you can do is to do your daily review.
So again, whether you’re using a best self journal whether using sticky notes or if you have nothing start with one of these but do the daily review where you go through and you prioritize you organize, you get all of your odds and ends from all of your systems into one place and you go through and do that and that is going to help you a lot with building that basis or the foundation for your organization because that include things like looking at your calendar, you know, getting rid of all the little known that are everywhere, going through your to do list, whatever you’re using, and getting all that stuff together.
And at least seeing it, being aware of it, so that you’re not late to meetings, you don’t miss calls that you forgot about that were in your calendar, but you never looked. So you never knew they were coming, you know, little tasks that you have written down and forgot about things like that. So I find that that really forms the basis for your organization.
And then maybe this needs to be done and adjusted for you. Maybe you’ve already got this going, but you’re feeling it’s not really doing it. It’s not giving you all the way there then maybe you need to do this and again at the end of the day and have kind of a shutdown procedure where you then look ahead for the next day or through the rest of the week just to remember and say, Okay, this is what’s going on tomorrow or these are the big events that are going on this week. And to don’t the rest of the stuff out of your head you know, do you have these things that are you know, on your mind get that stuff out when you’re done before you’re done for the day so that when you are you know you whatever you’re doing going home you’re going to have dinner with your friends.
You’re going to go to the kids, you want to head out and meet up with friends, whatever it is, so that you can go and really do that and not have this stuff on your mind. Or even worse, you know, drop the ball on something. So that’s kind of the, like, baseline organizational side of that. But then the second part of this is follow through. And I think a lot of this for me comes from prioritization. And I see this organizationally as well, not just personally. But once you’ve done this process, you’ve got your organization, you’ve got like a daily review, part of that is prioritizing and you’ve got to get pretty hardcore about this and start really looking at you know, what can I delegate.
Okay, whether you have employees or not, is there like contractors you could use? Is that something you could use an online marketplace? You know, pay someone a couple dollars to take care of is it something just as importantly you can delete and is it you know, when you prioritize your tasks if you have 10 things you know, and you get through three of them than the other ones, by definition, don’t get done or weren’t as important. And that’s a really valuable thing to do.
Because over time, you’re going to start looking and seeing what it is that is the most important that can get you the results. And I think a lot of times, people, myself included, have problems with follow through, because we start like 12 things, and maybe two or three of them are really important. And we end up focusing on the wrong thing, maybe half the time.
And so maybe you’re working on some of the important stuff but some of it gets left behind or you feel like you quit because you just got overwhelmed. And so over time prioritizing and being organized I think helps just drive its own follow through because once you really cut it down, it’s so much easier to focus and then once you have the focus the follow through to me starts to come naturally. So there’s a lot more into that as far as what you can do to help yourself follow through but without going into you know, hours long discussion today.
Think what I just talked about a really work and then, you know, setting the right goals and reminding yourself of them, you know, sometimes, you know whether we’re building a business and we think, you know, I maybe shouldn’t have to do this, or I don’t want to do this. Well, tough luck, I guess is the nice way to say it. Sometimes you got to do it. And it can be really helpful as part of your daily review to remind yourself of your goals and why you’re doing this stuff.
Because, okay, well, I’ve got to, you know, write an article, maybe I don’t want to be doing this, but I can’t afford someone else to do it right now. It just needs to be done and reminding yourself of the end or the larger goals will really help you with the follow through instead of becoming, you know, procrastination oriented and just putting it off. So hopefully that’s helpful.
Again, I would start with the basics, get organized, get a daily review in place if you need to do it more than once a day. And then from there, you know, start being a little bit more ruthless about your your time and your tasks and where you’re directing your energy into.
Okay, the last question today was, okay, so this came through the website, this is good. Someone was saying that they’re very responsive to their customers, which has been a good thing. But they’ve overdone it to the point that they’re spending so much time meeting other people’s demands, and that they’ve lost sight of taking care of themselves and focusing on the right things. So first of all, definitely been there and done that, as far as doing consulting, do some consulting for areas like sales funnels, automation, stuff like that.
And I think that for me, the really there’s a couple things but the really big overarching thing I had to realize and come to terms with was you’ve got to set limits for yourself. And a lot of that has to do with time, whether it’s 30 minute meeting and people being on time including yourself, or whether it’s taking calls or how many you can take because if you don’t respect your time, how do you
You expect anyone else to ever respect your time, right? Nobody’s going to. And most of the time, even if you do respect your time, people won’t. But in general, as you start working with clients, or you’re taking these calls, if you let time slide, if you let talks go on longer than they should you let clients show up late, then you’re not respecting your time and they won’t. Okay. So I found that that was the first one and that was on me, I had to be more tough on myself, which sounds and comes across sometimes as being tougher on other people. But really, it is it’s hard, right?
You want to help these people you want to take their calls, you want to, you know, see if this turns into business, or you can help this client but the end of the day, you can’t do it all and so you need to respect that respect your time and that will definitely help you now the other thing you can do with this is to look and say, you know, what is it that you’re doing that really provides the value Okay, is it you say you’re spending so much time meeting other people’s demands and
Is it demands? Or are you providing them value? You know, what is it that that provides value? And this could take some time to figure out, it may not always be super clear if you’re a consultant, is it the conversations and the phone calls you’re having? Or is it the end product that you’re delivering? Or is it something entirely else, but finding out where the value is, and then again, carving out or setting those, those guidelines around that that, okay, we have a 15 minute onboarding call, I get the information I need, then we go away.
I spend my time I work on the deliverables I deliver and then we have a 30 minute wrap up call some you know, this is just a hypothetical process, but really establishing that and sticking to it over time. And then, you know, changing it if the customers need that, but finding out what it is that you’re doing that provides value building that process around that and sticking to it will really be freeing I find and then the way to stick to this because this is I think is the hard part for a lot of people is, you know, maybe you feel bad about this, like, Well, I think that this, you know, this customer wants to talk to me more they need more of my time.
And the way that I look at this is, you know, can you provide more value to more people if you continue to do this? And the answer, of course, is no, if you’re stretched thin, and, you know, you’re you feel like you’re doing yourself a disservice, you’re not taking care of yourself, you’re losing focus, then every single other customer or client or potential client of yours is going to suffer and that sucks, right? That’s not going to result in you doing well it could result in you even hurting your business and and hurting other people’s businesses.
So keep that in mind when you know, you say hey, you need to make this meeting on time. You know, there’s a long list of reasons why you’re doing that. And one of those is you’re trying to help their your client and help them with their business. So hopefully that’s helpful for you. This is stuff that I’ve definitely had to do.
What I had not perfect it’s tough you know sometimes to say okay like we got to go or you know letting a client go because hey if you can’t respect my time and you’re just going to constantly Miss meetings or be late you know everyone’s human things happen from time to time but eventually it’s like yeah he you might have to just let a client go and say hey you know come back when you can make the the schedule and you’re serious about involving me in your work. So good questions today. Some some deep stuff I’m gonna check real quick and see if there’s anything on the page.
All right, don’t see anything we’re good to go. So if you’re watching the replay again, you can come join us in the real world productivity group. include the link or the link should be below if you’re watching the replay click Subscribe on YouTube stay up to date, obviously on these Q and A’s any other videos and then app reviews we do and if you haven’t picked up the foundation yet you can go to productivity dot Academy slash
Foundation, alright, grab this, this is going to help you set the baseline, you know, if you’ve had other courses or you’ve done other things, you’re trying to be more productive, you’re trying to be organized. And, you know, like, I’m going to get this app and it’ll, you know, solve my problems like news flash, it’s not going to.
So what I’ve done is just basically distill everything down that I’ve picked up over the last, you know, eight years as an engineer, then building my own business building teams working with automation and and just everything I’ve done to save time to build my team to master time management and, you know, which is truly lifelong. But what I want to share with everyone is the ability to kind of get on the same level to build that foundation so that you can start adding in all this cool stuff.
Start building businesses are building things that you want that’s important what you want to do. So again, go to productivity dot Academy, slash the foundation. Grab that and then every week come join me live for the q&a. I’ll see you next week.
